It was not surprising that he liked to cook and that he cooked by feel. He never followed a recipe but liked to create a dish with an “interesting shape”. Sugar made things “rounder”, while citrus added “points” to food. He adjusted other seasonings to “make the lines steeper”, to “sharpen up the corners”, or to “make the surface stretch further back”…..
“The shape changes with every moment, just as flavor does,” explained Michael. “If you use sweet and sour sauce, for example, you taste the sweetness first, and then it becomes a tart moment later. The shape changes the same way according to how the taste changes. French cooking is my favorite precisely because it makes the shape change in fabulous ways,” he confided.
“If you taste the complexity of a French dish, with it’s layer upon layer in different locations in your mouth, the first taste is always a sweet one . It comes in flat and then becomes a three-dimensional at the back of your tongue. It has this terrific movement to it. Sour taste, on the other hand, have only two dimensions, either points or flat surfaces…”
Cytowic, Richard E., M.D. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, MIT Press, 1993, P. 63
posted by Tamara Gayer
“The shape changes with every moment, just as flavor does,” explained Michael. “If you use sweet and sour sauce, for example, you taste the sweetness first, and then it becomes a tart moment later. The shape changes the same way according to how the taste changes. French cooking is my favorite precisely because it makes the shape change in fabulous ways,” he confided.
“If you taste the complexity of a French dish, with it’s layer upon layer in different locations in your mouth, the first taste is always a sweet one . It comes in flat and then becomes a three-dimensional at the back of your tongue. It has this terrific movement to it. Sour taste, on the other hand, have only two dimensions, either points or flat surfaces…”
Cytowic, Richard E., M.D. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, MIT Press, 1993, P. 63
posted by Tamara Gayer
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